Author: A.K. Afferez

À La Recherche de l’Amérique Perdue: Fantasizing America

À La Recherche de l’Amérique Perdue: Fantasizing America

To say that the French have a love-hate relationship with the United States is an understatement. We’ll be tssk-tssking Americans for their alleged anti-intellectualism and Puritan mores, while unabashedly dreaming Technicolor dreams of New York and California and happily binging on series. There’s also a strong mainstream appetite for American literature, or at least one…

Photo by hojusaram

Stray Reflections: Korean Literature in France

Livre Paris, France’s annual largest book fair, took place last weekend, and the invited country this year was South Korea, in honor of the France-Korea Year, celebrating 130 years of cooperation between the two countries. Interest in Korean culture has grown exponentially over the last few years. Lack of strategic marketing and distribution networks, cultural…

white concrete landmark under blue sky
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Circumflexes and censorship: on the French spelling reform

Behold: a diacritic has got an entire country in an uproar. And of course that country is France. Let’s rewind a bit: in 1990, the Académie Française, prestigious gatekeeper of all things French, proposes a spelling reform that generates countless pamphlets and petitions to “save the French language.” Ultimately nothing much happens, the old spellings…

Writing Lessons: Andrew Jason Valencia

Writing Lessons: Andrew Jason Valencia

In our Writing Lessons series, writers and writing students will discuss lessons learned, epiphanies about craft, and the challenges of studying writing. This week, we hear from Andrew Jason Valencia, an MFA candidate at the University of South Carolina. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AValenciaWrites —Andrew Ladd, Blog Editor Of all the adjustments I had…

Comedian Louis CK on stage and looking to his left with his hands up

The Ploughshares Round-Down: Why Louie Is Like Great Literature

Tasha Golden is on vacation from the blog this week, so covering for her on the Round-Down today is the writer Gila Lyons. Gila’s work has appeared in Salon, The Millions, The Morning News, Tablet, The Forward, The NY Press, The Faster Times, The Berkshire Review, and other publications. She lives in Boston, where she writes and teaches writing….